Three Song Cold Weather Groove

Winter has arrived where I am. I walked two miles in the biting cold and feel alive in that way only narrow survival can elicit. Your heart rate slows down. The world seems bigger when it's cold. And that's what I'm looking for from music today, slow engmatic expanse, the barely making it blues, a real winter groove.

To world oppressed by the blunt and obvious noise of teen pop and Nu Metal came the delicate elegant Icelandic band Sigur Ros. Their second album, first to be released in America, was called Agaetis Byrjun and came out in 2001. Its slow building but still hook-drenched melodies are perfectly cinematic and could even have you believing you're the hero in some slow-burn Kubrikian drama unfolding among ice and clouds.

Sixteies British folk band Pentangle perform here with an organic soul but also a nearly-mechanical precision that resembles some of Massive Attack's more elegaic moments. It's a lush enigmatic groove that seems to exist both in the future and past simultaneously.

You've gotten where you're going and feeling slowly returns to your extremities. Maybe you have a cup of coffee in your hand and you can feel you heartbeat as you look out the window at the blowing cold. Hopefull you have something as deliberately beautiful and considerate as Cannonball Adderly Sextet's Autumn leaves. With Miles Davis on trumpet and Art Blakey on drums you're not going to find it done better.